


nebulas

by tothemoon



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Canon Era, Graduation, M/M, Relationship Study, Slice of Life, Tokyo (City)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 11:07:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5866984
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tothemoon/pseuds/tothemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You'll have to let me think about it,” Hanamaki says to him while they're looking at soup stocks in the supermarket one evening, because he knows being with someone is not as simple as he'd like it to be. </p><p>(At this, Matsukawa does not fret. He goes for the snack aisle, instead.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	nebulas

**Author's Note:**

> [Please note that this gorilla statue is real.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GAQjB5cCAE) You'll need this bit of info later. 
> 
> Major props to the songs "Love Somebody" by St.Lucia, "Constant Conversations" by Passion Pit, and "Dreamers" by Savoir Adore for being major inspirations!!

 

 

The back of his head is a nebulous place. 

That's the usual thought Hanamaki has when he’s picking petals out of Matsukawa’s hair after spring runs, his legs criss-crossed and lean parallel to the hunch of a dear friend’s back.

“Look at this mess,” he says, and Matsukawa does not refute it. There’s not a lot today in all honesty, because the cherry blossoms have almost finished falling for the season, but he's never skimped out on Matsukawa before and it'd be a shame to start now. Keeping his fingers sifted through the tangle and the void, Hanamaki ducks close to Matsukawa’s shoulder, digs out one last petal hidden in the crook of an ear, and presents it for him to see. _Mhmm_ comes a hum, that usual _Matsukawa Issei_ hum, and the two of them wait in a small silence for nothing in particular. 

“Hey, Makki.”

“Yeah?” Hanamaki keeps himself hovered over Matsukawa’s shoulder. This is usually the part where he talks about what he had for breakfast (like _“ah, my breath still smells like pickled plums”_ ) or how his running shoes were wearing down (like _“I think my toe is sticking out somewhere”_ ) or something along those lines, because that lull after practice always made for a small and unserious peace. 

“Well. I guess I've been putting some thought into it, or _maybe_ a lot,” Matsukawa muses, tilting his head away from Hanamaki. He neglects to finish. Upon closer inspection, Hanamaki makes out the curve of a face he can almost see—the line of long eyelashes, the curve of a cheek’s apple, just the very peak of a well-formed nose (because Hanamaki would say that Matsukawa Issei had the best looking nose on the team, Oikawa’s claims _be damned_ )—and decides he can't guess what he's thinking this time. He finds the most peculiar anomaly instead, a forming pink behind biggish ears— _that's new—_ but decides he has no idea what any of it means.

“ _It_?” Hanamaki asks, hearing the _pitter-patter_ of incoming footsteps outside the door. “What do you mean by _it_?”

“I don’t even know what I mean by _it_ ,” Matsukawa says. “It’s one of those things you can never really _give_ a name…”

“Oh.” Hanamaki stays close. “Then don’t think too hard about it. The _existential_ will only make your hairline recede,” he warns with a childish tug of black hair. Matsukawa lets his head tip back at the pull.

“But, I mean, it’s not completely hopeless. I guess you _could_ put into words. Just not very good ones. Better phrased, maybe, as a question.”

Hanamaki frowns. “Then try me.”

“Well.”

“ _Well?_ ”

Matsukawa leans forward, neck craned before turning to face Hanamaki in the eye. He’s still nothing but the partial view of a face, eyes low, ears red, door of a closed mouth coming to part, and Hanamaki waits. _Listens_ , as he does best.

Outside, the footsteps gather into a full stampede. He can hear their ace, Iwaizumi, rise up in a bicker on the other side of the door. Oikawa breezes through his taunts nonetheless, like cool air on sweat-glinted skin, and the rest of the team follows in their calls. 

“What would you think of it?” Matsukawa asks through the mayhem. “The idea of us being together?”

Hanamaki raises his head without parting, fingers still stuck on the strands. He does not answer, nor will he at the moment, _how could he really,_ but finds one more petal in Matsukawa’s hair instead. 

 _What a mess_ , he concludes without saying, and Matsukawa just cards his fingers through the thick of it.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

 

“You'll have to let me think about it,” Hanamaki says to him while they're looking at soup stocks in the supermarket one evening, because he knows being with someone is not as simple as he'd like it to be.

(At this, Matsukawa does not fret. He goes for the snack aisle, instead.)

  
  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  


 

“I still don’t understand what you mean by the word _together,_ ” Hanamaki asks with two canned coffees in his hands, fresh from the vending machine and five days since _the world’s most casual confession._  

At the question, Matsukawa blinks twice, still caught up in his worn copy of Murakami’s _The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle,_ and closes it gently in his lap. He takes the coffee, cracking the tab with a rather dull thud, and takes a swig. “I don’t know either, but I guess it’s like this: you buy me coffee this time, and I’ll buy you coffee next time,” he offers, eyes out at the gates and a lengthened sundown ahead. “Or a juice box. Extra hoppy beer, when we're older. I imagine I might like extra hoppy beer.” 

“ _Huh_. Well, isn’t that the usual, then?” Hanamaki asks. “You don’t need to call it _being together._ That’s just _being_.” 

“Oh?” Matsukawa turns back, a small glint before turning away. “Then tell me how you define it.”

Hanamaki shrugs. He thinks back to the ex-girlfriends and ex-boyfriends, the held hands and heavy kisses. “I wouldn’t say the coffee stuff is wrong. You’d just have to add, well, _other_ things,” he says, before deciding that’s not quite right, either. Fiddling with his backpack strings, he thinks of doing such things with Matsukawa, those _other things,_ and realizes he can't imagine it at all. He tells himself that's because everyone's bound to be different at intimacies, with all the different combinations of _applied pressure_ and _favorite erogenous zones_ , and decides to go along with it. He even tilts his head back a bit on the bench, eyes looming and half lidded to face Matsukawa, maybe an obvious enough signal _to try me_ (but apparently, it's not). 

In fact, Matsukawa just laughs, almost soundless. He hasn't a clue.

“Other things?” he just asks, fully aware of the implications. “Aren't you switching the steps around a little bit? You haven't even given me a proper response yet.”

Hanamaki shrugs. He shifts a little closer to Matsukawa on the bench, blinking until he might get it ( _but of course he still doesn't get it_ ). 

“We live in trying times, Matsukawa Issei. Life is too short to go step by step.”

“Oh?”

Hanamaki nods, slow and sure. Head tilted up in a _I dare you._

At this, Matsukawa smiles. Hanamaki thinks Matsukawa might understand the finer points of body language when he ducks down, slow but not hesitant to kiss him; and he can't help but think— _oh,_ of course he's got to be as suave as he looks, with one arm around his back on the bench-back and breath like fresh espresso. 

Hanamaki kisses back in the next instant, lips stuck together by the canned coffee sugar. _This is a weak excuse_ , he thinks, to use for the case of staying just like this, and so he doesn't; he's the first to part in a reasonable fade, and Matsukawa stays close in the lean.

“Not bad,” Hanamaki whispers, using a small fist to knock against Matsukawa’s shoulder. “Seven out of ten.”

Matsukawa shrugs, still in the smallest proximity. He does not dare shift. “Well,” he says, “I guess I'll take that score.”

“Now, now—complacency will get you nowhere,” Hanamaki jokes, lifting into a smile, but Matsukawa does not follow this time.

“Oh, I know—” he starts, looming over one of Hanamaki’s ears for a secret, “but that wasn't bad for my first time, right?” he asks, and Hanamaki can feel a grin widen against the skin of his lobe.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“No fucking way,” Hanamaki repeats for the hundredth time on their way home.

Matsukawa shakes his head, flips to the next page in his book, and offers a small smile. “Yes _fucking_ way,” he singsongs right back, as unbothered as ever. “You think I'd say something like that for the dramatic effect?”

“But what about Sanae-san?” _Ex-girlfriend_. Played the guitar. Short and pretty. 

“Nah. We split a sandwich once at lunch, I guess, but that's it. We broke up a couple of days after that, but she still teaches me guitar on every other Saturday.” Another turn of the page. When Matsukawa drops his arm back down to his side, their hands skim but do not link. 

“Tetsu?” Hanamaki did not like Tetsu very much. “From the soccer team?”

“ _Huh_? Oh, him. He was an asshole—he was just using me to get to Oikawa, so I stopped things before he got the chance.” 

“Ah—” Hanamaki feels the smallest sort of satisfaction rise up in his gut. “Oh, what about Oikawa, then? Didn't he want to practice on you at some point, too?” 

“Ha! He wanted to use me, too. Chain reaction, I guess,” Matsukawa says. “Maybe I'm _irresistible._ ”

Hanamaki rolls his eyes, paying no further attention to that last part. “But wouldn't that make Oikawa an asshole, too?” comes the tease. 

“Yeah, but he's _our_ asshole.”

“I wouldn't even go that far.”

“ _Asshole lite_.” 

“That's better,” Hanamaki corrects, and the two of them walk on, comfortably quiet down neighborhood alleys. Book pages flip (today it's _The Woman in the Dunes_ ), and Hanamaki crouches down to pet the cats that have never liked him, watches them skitter away. From there, they talk no more about kisses, and not because it's an uncomfortable subject; Hanamaki decides, in the thick of a certain peace, the special kind one can only experience in the twilight of his high school career, _some teetering edge of one last high school romance,_ that some things are better left unsaid.

And yet, because this world is a mysterious place, and Hanamaki knows everyone's got a universe’s worth of differences in their heads, Matsukawa peeks up from his book after a few minutes, right at the tail end of their daily journey, and calls after him. 

 _Makki,_ comes the name, firm in the way Matsukawa usually says it, but he doesn't pair it with a _goodbye_.

“Do you think it's true, what they say? That you should save your _firsts_ for someone special?”

Hanamaki shrugs.

“Because I don't buy it,” Matsukawa continues.

“Oh? Why not?”

“I mean, not all of the time, at least. Because accidents are bound to happen, and sometimes it's just a matter of _hormones_ and other weird biological stuff. Special today is _I've-made-a-horrible-mistake_ tomorrow.”

“Accidents,” Hanamaki repeats back. He leans at the gate of his high-walled house, thinks back to how he'd picked _Seijou High School_ with eyes closed on a list of potential places to go, decided to play volleyball because it was the first informational booth in sight, and met Matsukawa that same day in the gym. A fellow slacker. Ill-fitted shorts. Tall then, too. (They got the _slacker_ beat out of them in no time, though.)

Hanamaki then thinks back to a preposterous thing called fate, and how it positively wasn't for everybody, and wonders why another word wasn't more _en vogue_ in its place. How _serendipitous_ , he thinks instead, to have met Matsukawa Issei, with his limitless paperback books and lack of knee pads at practice. _Matsukawa Issei._ A good and decent fellow. Hanamaki can't help but scrunch his face a little when it starts to sound like home on his tongue.

“Maybe it's a little bit of everything,” Hanamaki answers plainly, with the mouth on the edge of a grin. “Nothing wrong with that.”

He slips behind the gates, that last sight of Matsukawa a cheeky one, maybe even a little taken aback, and lets himself linger against the door when he shuts it closed.

  


 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

“So, how long do you think they’ve been together?” Hanamaki asks Matsukawa one day after practice, when it’s getting late but Oikawa and Iwaizumi still have the energy to bicker about _whatever it is they’re bickering about_ on the other side of the gym. Watching the two of them argue had been a pastime for, _well_ , passing the time since their first year, and a definite remedy against the brunt of post-practice chores. 

At this latest question, Matsukawa continues his slow waltz with his broom, head tipped to the _two loverboys_ , and decides, most casually, that they’ve been together “ _forever_.”

Hanamaki looks back down, semi-focused on untangling the endless nets. “Forever?” he asks. “I was thinking more like...three months or so.” He holds the nets up by the hook of his fingers, examining his work. “Hardly a forever. Probably until graduation,” he surmises further. 

Matsukawa looks back, blinking. “Graduation? What makes you think that?”

“Well,” says Hanamaki. “I think Oikawa’s going to tell all of us at some point, but I heard him talking on the phone before with a scout. _A Tsukuba scout._ ” 

“Tokyo, then.”

Hanamaki smiles. “Like you, my friend.”

“Now, we don’t know that for sure. That’s only if I can pass the exams, first.” 

“You will. Then you’ll get to see the city,” Hanamaki singsongs, hands grazing across the rest of the twine. They go quiet after that—the whole gym does, actually—because even those gifted in bickering must know when to tire out; from there, Hanamaki keeps working on his nets and Matsukawa sweeps. 

“Forever, though,” Hanamaki continues, “that’s a nice thought. I wouldn’t have taken you for such a romantic.”

Matsukawa shrugs. “Now I don’t know about that. I think it just means those two have known each other for a long time. I’m talking about their history. That’s the sort of forever I mean.”

“Well, I’m talking _past_ the history. Isn’t that the most interesting part about _forever_ , anyway? What comes next?” Hanamaki asks with nets dropped on the floor, deciding that he’ll never be able to untangle everything, anyway. “It’s a nice thought.”

“Hm,” Matsukawa nods, unbothered. “If it’s so nice, why put an expiration date on them, then? _Graduation?_ ”

Eyes flicker into something knowing, not sad but darker than usual, somehow. Resolute in reading between the lines, those sorts of conversations people have without ever really having.

Still, Hanamaki smiles.

“Like, I said. It’s a nice thought. Whatever forever’s supposed to mean.”

  


 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

It is later that night when Hanamaki decides, alone in his room, that this is no word for the lighthearted. _Forever_ was best suited for those high on grand schemes and big dreams, and he was much more content to _be_. 

_“So?”_

“So what?” Hanamaki replies back into the receiver, phone stuck to his ear.

The next question that comes out on the other end is static-tinged and half-asleep. “ _Why are you up so late?_ ” Matsukawa asks on the other side, and his yawn sounds like a gust of desert wind over the phone. He dreams of tumbleweed. 

“Well, I was thinking about things,” Hanamaki tells him. “The sort of thoughts you only have when you’re about to sleep, you know?”

“ _Very serious thoughts_ , _I suppose_ ,” says Matsukawa.

“Very." 

 _“Your life, flashing before your eyes.”_  

“Oh, of course.” 

_“The existential. Humanity’s greatest questions.”_

“Yeah, like why you don’t wear kneepads on the court,” Hanamaki jokes, digging his face into the pillow under him. He presses his smile away into the plush of it, based on a personal mantra— _there's nothing good about getting giddy at two in the morning._  

 _“Well, I’ve got a few questions, too_ ,” Matsukawa claims, and Hanamaki groans in the stretch on the other side.

“Yeah? Like what?” 

_“Why you were the first to call me tonight. Or at all. You hate talking on the phone, don’t you?”_

Hanamaki peers up at the ceiling, at the glow-in-the-dark stars he had pasted up there as a kid, all darkness except for the cool green glow, and reaches up. On the subject of universes, he imagines a head of dark hair instead, always a mess between his fingers, and thinks of keeping it in his hands. 

“I'm visiting another step on the list, I guess,” Hanamaki answers him. “It’s all right.” 

“ _Yeah? And what else is on that list of yours?_ ”

“I don't know yet.”

“ _I guess that's the fun of it_.”

“ _Hey,_ you don't know if it'll be all fun.” 

Matsukawa just laughs. He bids a farewell for the night shortly after some silence on the line, and Hanamaki does the same. 

“ _Good night, Makki_.”

“Night, Matsukawa.”

He drifts. His senses pulse until they find the will to settle. An imprinted light, caught in the shape of five-sided stars, catches behind Hanamaki’s eyelids before fading.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

When their last inter-high comes and goes in the usual result, a final loss to the likes of Shiratorizawa, Matsukawa and Hanamaki end up alone together at a convenience store in Sendai with a bag full of flavored potato chips, artificially colored sodas, and other late-night fare full of preservatives. 

“Cheers,” Matsukawa says, raising a can of _C.C. Lemon_ to match a small bottle of Yakult.

“Cheers—and may we crush our foes next time,” Hanamaki says in all listlessness while bumping their drinks, feeling the ache curl up in his toes. Hanamaki leans down over the curb, head in his knees, and lets the faint noise reign from there; he takes in the whirring _zip_ of neon signs, the ambient electro pop coming from a pair of unworn headphones, and the rush of passing sedans on their way home. 

“I still can't feel my fingers,” Matsukawa says without fanfare, sips made at his lemon pop. The electro pop finds a pronounced bass. “Funny what a finals match can do to you.” 

“It's the adrenaline, or the endorphins, or something,” Hanamaki tells him, peering back up.

“Endorphins sound like a _happy_ thing, though. I'm going to stick with adrenaline,” Matsukawa decides with a nod, leaning back on the concrete. Hanamaki stays in his crouch, beckons for another Yakult out of the pack, and peels the lid off without drinking it.

“No need to mourn so much,” Hanamaki tries to clear the trembling out from his throat, and he succeeds this time. “We've got one more tournament, don't we?” Chin tipped up, eyes burn when he concentrates at the night sky, but never do they wet. He whittles out a small breath instead, mouth made like a smoker exhaling something pressed.

“I was talking to Tetsu, you know, from the—”

“Soccer team. I know. _Tetsu from the soccer team._ ” Hanamaki rolls his eyes, just slightly annoyed, and beckons Matsukawa for a bag of chips (but only the spring onion kind).

“Well yeah, so,” Matsukawa starts, reaching for the back of his head after, “you know how it is by now. He's retiring, and we're gonna see third years start to quit and all, from the other teams.”

Hanamaki slumps a bit. “Are you saying you want to quit?" 

Matsukawa raises his shoulders before keeping himself at his usual levels. “I mean, it's strange, because I should want to, right? Maybe if it was _first year_ me. But studying or volleyball—there's two types of hell, and I should be content to pick just _one_.” 

“But you want both,” says Hanamaki. 

Matsukawa smiles.

“Absolutely.” 

A little fire erupts, and the two of them meet right in the eye. Hanamaki finds the strangest intimacy in this, and it is almost enough to want to kiss him. On the pavement, two hands find the smallest touch and don't tense up at the contact.

“So what do you say, Makki? Are you gonna join me, too?”

Hanamaki thinks about this for a total of three seconds—blinks made, grins spread, and spirits lifted—before giving Matsukawa a non-answer. He points to the can of _C.C. Lemon_ still in his hands, asks for a sip with a small nod, and watches his best friend’s face lift into the utmost skepticism. Hands graze over the aluminum before settling along Matsukawa’s cheeks, and Hanamaki smiles into a second, brushed kiss.

  


 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


“I never gave you an answer, did I?” Hanamaki asks him, right after their last pack Yakult in the pack, two bags of chips to go, and the onset of a late evening chill. But before Matsukawa even has the chance to respond, _no you haven't,_ the convenience store owner tells them this is the absolute _last time_ he'd let them loiter like this (and that pesky kids like them were better off wasting away at cram school, _anyway_ ). They leave after that, quiet, but still looming, like they've always had this uncanny ability to pick up where they left off, to make their way down familiar paths. Hanamaki’s not sure why it feels new this time, though. He stares down at the gravel like they’ve laid fresh ground. 

“As I was saying,” he starts up again. 

“ _As you were saying_ ,” Matsukawa repeats, looking off to the side.

“I think we should try,” Hanamaki says. “Being together. But it'd be a shame to get so attached, with all the things we’ve got ourselves into.” 

“Of course.”

“But I also think we should at least try, I think. Because you're okay.”

“And you're okay, too,” Matsukawa says. “I guess.”

Hanamaki can't help but crack a smile. “ _So_.” He lets it fade when he gets to the next snippet of news. He gulps down. “That's settled but—there’s something else, too. Just so we know our limits. So we know _not_ to get so attached.” 

“All right.” They keep walking, respective paces slowed. Hanamaki knows because he can't his eyes off the the ground. He stops for the sake of clarity, for a focus squared up on just _this,_ and Matsukawa follows.

“Let’s end things on graduation day. No more and no less.”

Those eyes come again, darker than dark and heavy lidded, but Matsukawa slowly holds his hand out to shake. He does not fret. 

He just takes Hanamaki’s hand in his instead, gives his answer without a word, and leads both of them home and for the rest of the way to come.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

 

When summer arrives, Hanamaki Takahiro dreams of the long stretch of an endless beach, lying on a big terry towel instead of the floor at Matsukawa’s house. He glances up at the blaring television set when the news comes on for the 6:00AM FNN broadcast, and the remote is much too far to reach to change the channel. The air conditioner is already hollering in the other room, and Matsukawa’s there with it, packing his duffel bag last minute for training camp. 

“Toothbrush?” Hanamaki asks for the tenth time in a span of an hour. “The last two years, you've forgotten to pack your toothbrush.”

“Yes,” Matsukawa answers in a hurry, maybe just a little annoyed, and Hanamaki can't help but snicker. 

“How about an extra sleeping shirt?” _Yes._ “Your phone charger? I mean, because you're always on Twitter.” _Yes._ “Underwear.” _Yes._ “And I mean the comfy sort. Not those briefs you complain about riding up your—” _Yes, for the last time yes—_

Matsukawa comes back into the other room, a hurried mess, and finds Hanamaki on the floor, blinking up in a peak taunt. He grins back at him, daring, and Matsukawa accepts it with a dive to the ground, too. He rests himself easy with his nose to the ceiling, and lets out the huffiest sigh before settling.

“There, there,” Hanamaki says, rolling his eyes off to the side. He’s tempted to let Matsukawa rest on his shoulder. “Maybe that'll teach you to pack last minute _every single time._ ”

“I do not.” 

“But you do.”

“Okay, I do.”

Matsukawa hums out the usual, those non-notes to fill the resulting silence, and Hanamaki feels his face heat up despite the constant reminder _not to._

“Kneepads?” 

“Oh, _ha_.”

“I'm serious,” Hanamaki drones on, deadpan. “We always joke about Oikawa’s knee, but sometimes I think it's _you_ we should be worrying about.”

Matsukawa scoffs. Hanamaki hears Matsukawa’s music rise up in the other room again, _too much noise_ for either one of them to find any sort of tranquility—but luckily enough for Hanamaki, he just so happened to be dating someone who might've valued _a time of peace,_ too; he watches a frown come over Matsukawa’s face, more a twitch than anything else, and the TV goes off in _blip_ not long after that. What's left is the sound of— _oh_ , what did Matsukawa call it again? _Lo-fi_?—and Hanamaki lets the buzz of it carry them away.

“We could skip training camp this year, you know,” Hanamaki says in jest, putting a palm over Matsukawa’s forehead. “When Iwaizumi comes to get us, we can just tell him you've got the _worst_ fever.” 

Matsukawa yawns. “And what do you suppose we do after that?”

“Run away,” Hanamaki supposes. “Run away from all the _running_ we'd have to do at camp.” 

“Doesn't that defeat the purpose, though? We'd be getting away from the thing we hate...by doing the thing we hate.”

“ _Okay,_ but running away could mean, you know, taking a bus, or something. A train. We wouldn't have to actually do _any running_ ,” Hanamaki muses. He wonders why they're even talking about this. With eyes shut just to rest, he wonders what good can even come out of _6:30AM departures to Tokyo,_ those _damned summer training camps_ , because they could _very well_ just have camp here and—

Oh. 

Hanamaki has the best idea.

“What if we actually did it?” 

Matsukawa turns to face him again. “You don't mean...”

Without answering, Hanamaki sits up too fast, feeling the blood rush up to his head, and begins peeling off his striped uniform pants in lieu of the more casual _black jogger_.  He scrunches them up at the ankle. _Definite city pants_. He beckons Matsukawa to do the same.

“Iwaizumi is going to kill us when he comes here to find us gone,” Matsukawa answers, already yanking off the _Seijou green_ off his back. “And where would we even go?”

Hanamaki shrugs. “ _Wherever the city wants to take us_ ,” he mutters, in his greatest attempt at high drama, before changing out of everything else. “We’ll only be gone a day, right? Even less than that.”

“Oikawa Tooru will tell us we’re committing national treason,” Matsukawa says, right into the the other room and out again in no times, _casually dressed_ to the nines.

“Oh, let him.” Hanamaki likes his weird floral mosaic T-shirt, still finding a way to drape down his waist, and the way his hair’s gotten more mussed during changing. Matsukawa even goes after his backpack, music off and ready to go, extra bills stuffed into his pants pocket for the ticket to Tokyo.

Hanamaki gathers his things too, more excited than he’d ever care to admit, ready to meet the other side of the door when— _oh, no_ — 

 _“Ya-hoo—!”_  

“Damn it.” 

_“Iwa-chan, do you think they're sleeping?”_

Iwaizumi’s brought Oikawa with him. Another round of knocking comes after, terribly insistent.

 _“If they are, I'll be sure they get to sit on the rockiest part of the bus. I told them six-twenty.”_  

_“Mattsun! Makki-chaaan! Another summer training camp awaits!”_

Matsukawa comes up next to Hanamaki and shakes a head. _Sorry, not this time_ , he says, without really having to—because Hanamaki instantly understands: it's not like they were ever built for grand schemes, anyway, and it was better not to fly above their stations. This is what he tells himself when he's the one to answer the door, still half dressed for the world to see, and the other two third years buck up in the most meager sort of surprise.

“What's up with you two?” Iwaizumi asks, eyebrow raised. “You're going to training camp, not a...whatever those fashion magazines call it.”

“A casting call,” Oikawa chimes in, examining them head to foot. He looks to Hanamaki, eyes sharp, before settling on Matsukawa. “But look at you guys, all flushed.” He reaches over, tugging at Matsukawa’s shirt until it actually reaches to the waist of his jeans, and beckons at Hanamaki until he notices his _boxers_ sticking out of his joggers. “Good for you, getting your cardio in so early,” he says with a petulant smile, and even Iwaizumi can't help but hide a small laugh.

“Oh, _no_ , we didn't,” _we haven't,_ Hanamaki tries to start, before Oikawa waves him off. He figures it's better anyway, for him not to suspect anything else. Matsukawa glances over at him like he might feel the same.

“Well, whatever you do in private is _your_ business, but we've got a bus to catch,” Iwaizumi says. “So get changed and, _uh_ , catch us down the road.”

“Got it.”

Oikawa and Iwaizumi take their leaves, and the two of them can do nothing but wave to them at the door. Matsukawa’s mother comes out of her room shortly after, ready to start her day with the reminder that her son has a bus to take soon, and Hanamaki takes this as the final signal not to run off today. 

“Well, let's go,” Matsukawa says, worlds away _,_ and that's that. They slip back into their uniforms, leave the house with toast, and sling on their bags for one last summer training camp.

Along the way and down the road, Matsukawa leads, eyes straight ahead and not a trace of his face to be seen. He reaches for the back of his head, all nebulous—a _nebula—_ in the things he'll _never_ completely know, and Hanamaki just goes along with it. 

Without trying to guess, and to soothe the strangest nerves, Hanamaki catches up to take him by the hand.

It's the first time he's tried on his own, and he can't help but count that as a little victory.

They could always have Tokyo another day.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

Besides, training camp isn't so bad. Hanamaki thinks it's fun watching the first years get so into it, and remembering why he had liked it so much to begin with, too. Past the grueling practice drills and the clean-up afterwards, Seijou prided itself on a sense of _balance_ as well, which often meant _team bonding_ in the evenings. The first night had been the usual, with the horror stories and _urban legends_ Hanamaki’s heard a million times by now, and the second was a kind surprise on behalf of Oikawa’s birthday (and Matsukawa has been the one to get the cake this year, _the sweetheart_ ).

(Ew.) 

Hanamaki shakes his head, a reprimand for himself. The third night had been shaping to be the quietest of all, but Hanamaki thinks he might not mind it so much. He hits _play_ on a playlist he’d received not too long ago and lets himself float away. Sitting alone in an unused classroom, Hanamaki draws the curtains and lets the breeze in. Drawing for the exhale, because their coach had stressed the finer points of _personal meditation_ not an hour before, Hanamaki closes his eyes and tries not to think so far ahead. 

 _Because_ _you are not built for grand schemes._  

His MP3 player goes to the next song.

 _You cannot make galaxies out of nebulas._  

A door slides open behind him, a quiet glide. 

“There you are.” It's Matsukawa. Hanamaki slides over by the sill. “Where have you been? Oikawa wants to watch movies tonight. He snuck a projector and some DVDs to camp this year. 

“How'd he manage to do that?” Hanamaki asks. 

“I don't know,” Matsukawa answers, glancing down at the screen for the song playing, nods made when he figures out where they currently are in the mix. “But all I know is that I'm in no mood to watch _The Curious Case of Terror Tikachu_ for the fifth time—even if it's Iwaizumi’s favorite movie.”

Hanamaki glances back out the window. “Hm? Then what do you propose, then?”

A beat of silence hits the air, like Matsukawa’s made of them instead of skin cells or tiny little neurons, and Hanamaki can only look to him, more impatient than usual.

“Let's run away,” Matsukawa finally says, like maybe he had to think about it, and lets a smirk slink across his lips. At this, Hanamaki can't help but scrunch his face back at him, because _there's no reason Matsukawa should have to be such a renegade about this,_ and there's no reason he should feel so _taken_ by the prospect of the city, and him, and _the two of them,_ because, _what the fuck, it had been his idea in the first place_ — _so relax, why don't you?—_ but the thing is, Hanamaki knows he can't, not when he's the first one out the door and ready to go. He thinks of what to wear. He quickens his pace. Wide strides make for the most excited. 

With a laugh, because he can probably sense it too, Matsukawa follows right after, the beginning of their night abound.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

“So.” 

“ _So_?” 

“Why do you like the city so much?” Hanamaki asks when he's the one to buy the vending machine fare this time, two bottles of Kirin milk tea for the road. They've ended up, by some miracle, in the heart of Sangenjaya and seven minutes from Shibuya tonight, lost amongst the nestled wooden houses and twenty-four hour shops—but Matsukawa seems content in it all, judging from that sway in his walk, those lowered shoulders, and Hanamaki seeks to feel the same. 

“There's something about it, you know?”

Hanamaki blinks up, maybe on the edge of understanding. The time on his phone reads 9:47PM, designated dead time by not-in-the-city standards, but Hanamaki watches how Tokyo’s just getting started for the night. Ikayaza owners try waving over to them with the promise of live music and endless karaage, while the labyrinth of shops lure them in with cheap prices and endless wares (and thrifting _did_ sound kind of fun). Old century houses clutter the skyline as much as the likes of _skyscrapers do_ , all while the streetlights flicker all fussy between a new refinement and the fondness of _old_.

At this, Matsukawa gleams up in that _Matsukawa Issei_ way, never pronounced but just easy enough to read. A slight turn over the shoulder. Eyes crinkle by the corners. (Were those _crow’s feet_ , already?) Sometimes he smiles like eighteen going on _eighty,_ like maybe he's seen the entire world without telling anyone, or lived a million lives, _or lived forever_. An infinite head. _You’ll never know everything I’m thinking._ Hanamaki likes how he can never see the end of it. It’s a soul older than old. 

And so they walk on. Hanamaki looms close enough, past the people who'll never know they were here, fingers lightly grazed by the most non-committal grip, and watches him take the city.

Matsukawa has the nerve to ring passing bike bells and take fold-up menus for places they won't enter. Eyes light up (or do their best to light up) over underground acts and nestled record shops. “I’m just going to window shop,” he insists with an unconvincing mumble, when he pays for three vinyl sleeves for bands Hanamaki’s never even heard of before. Hanamaki decides to call this all a benevolent mischief. 

“So,” Hanamaki starts again.

“ _So?”_ Matsukawa repeats again.

“You never really answered my question,” Hanamaki picks right back up, when they’ve stopped for skewered meats and a trip in front of the famous hanging gorilla off a corner shop facade. They call it _Gorilla Tower,_ creatively enough.

“Is it enough to say _there’s something about it_?” he asks, reaching up curiously, and frowns when Matsukawa beats him by a few centimeters (though neither one of them can quite reach it). “Is it because of the weird kitschy stuff like this?”

“It’s not _kitschy._ Someone might really love this gorilla statue. Someone might’ve gotten _married_ in front of this gorilla statue,” Matsukawa asserts, staring right back at Hanamaki, and two hands touch on their way down from the reach. 

“So you _do_ love this place because of the gorilla statue,” Hanamaki guesses. “I bet your parents met here.” 

“Well, they did.” 

“ _You’re kidding._ ” Hanamaki’s eyes go wide.

“I am,” deadpans Matsukawa, never the most resilient in the face of a maintained ruse. “And I don’t love the city because of this gorilla statue. But I can’t rule him out either, I guess.”

“And what do you mean by that?” asks Hanamaki. “I don’t get it.”

Matsukawa stares back long and hard, face vacant like he might be trying to figure that out for himself, too. “Hm.”

“It's just interesting,” Hanamaki continues on. “You grow up all your life in one place, and you're comfortable—I mean, you’ve always seemed comfortable—and all of a sudden, you decide, _well_ , it's time to go. It's just interesting, is all. You begin to wonder when people start thinking like that. What makes this city so special?”

A smiles creeps along the edges of Matsukawa’s face, right at the corner of his lips without fully forming. “You sound like you might miss me,” he dares to say, and Hanamaki shrugs; he doesn't deny it though, because that was for people on the outskirts of _being together,_ and they were past any city limits. They were firmly in it for the time being, like the heart of some hub within a city. No point in lying. So Hanamaki just smiles back, clever as can be, and crosses his arms in front of him.

“I worry about _you_ , I think,” says Hanamaki. “If you end up falling anymore in love with me, you won't be able to leave the prefecture.”

Matsukawa scoffs. “Maybe,” comes the answer, lighter than usual, but Hanamaki knows there's no levity in it. When all goes quiet again, as things are bound to do between their jokes and all their punchlines, they let it reign. They stare up at Sangenjaya’s hanging gorilla, the city above and below and all around, and realize, maybe, the enormity of being together in such a place.

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

“Hey, are you alright, though?” 

Hanamaki bites down on his tongue. At the sting of it, he knows he cannot fret, because they both have plans they cannot break, _won't_ break; he was going to take over his father’s supermarket chain in Sendai while Matsukawa was going to study music production here, in Tokyo, by next spring, and that was that.

 _“I see them! Iwa-chan_ , _I told you! I told you they'd try to sneak out—”_

Because as much as Oikawa and Iwaizumi had _their_ plans to go professional (Hanamaki thinks he might hear them now, even, hollering in the crowd like timely ghosts), they wanted to do things, too. Good things. Decent things. Maybe _great_ things, if they dared to put their minds to it. 

_“They're by that weird gorilla thing! Let's go get them!”_

“Ah _—Makki—_ ” Matsukawa doesn't even finish his sentence, and before the either of them know it, they're running down the alleys of Sangenjaya. Iwaizumi’s hollering echoes down the shopping arcade, all with the insistence to _stop_ , but they don't.

  
  
  


 

* * *

 

  
  


 

Hanamaki imagines it, even at the worst time, what they might be like down the road.

He could be the inventor of a _one-of-kind_ convenience store snack, like a potato chip that _actually_ tasted like yakiniku for once, popular enough to sell in all his supermarkets (and supermarkets across the country, for that matter). In his head, Matsukawa would be the producer of various radio hits, a ghost to the public eye but _ever infamous_ in the underground scene, maybe deemed _a bad boy_ of sorts by his most ardent fans (and hell, maybe he’d even _date_ one too, but Hanamaki didn’t like thinking about that)— 

“Makki,” Matsukawa calls again. Hanamaki glances up, notices they’ve stopped between a rack of discount fur coats in their _escape from the other third years_. He finishes his train of thought. _Where was he again?_

 _Ah, yes—_  

They'd each live in their own cities, find things to love about them, respectively, and never feel the need to pry into each other’s lives. Hanamaki might send him care packages full of convenience store snacks from Sendai. In return, Matsukawa might give him mix tapes from Tokyo, full of _lo-fi_ or _wi-fi_ or whatever the kids were into those days— 

“ _Makki_ ,” comes the whisper, sharp in its own right.

Hanamaki lifts out of the dream. He gulps down, realizes how close he’s gotten to Matsukawa amongst the faux fur, and hears Oikawa call out from outside the shop. “You two are not going to get in a trouble, _I swear_ ,” he insists, pleasantly menacing, and Iwaizumi tells him to quit lying. 

Undaunted, Matsukawa rolls his eyes and gives up a small shake of the head—chin up and _almost sultry,_ ( _the bastard!_ ) he looks to Hanamaki without a word, like he might want to say, _“well, we might be here a while.”_ A store attendant at the other end of the floor doesn’t even notice them huddling there for now, judging from the way she’s bobbing her head to a pair of giant headphones, nose in a magazine, so Hanamaki just shrugs, compliant. _Whatever,_ he gestures back, _just as cool,_ and even dares to inch a bit closer.

“I have another question for you,” Hanamaki mouths, close enough so that Matsukawa might understand.

“Yeah?” Matsukawa looks back towards the crowd.

“How did they even know we were here?”

Matsukawa doesn’t look Hanamaki in the eye. “I don’t know. Maybe Oikawa’s got a seventh sense.”

“No.”

“No?”

Hanamaki nods. “I don’t think so. You told them, or something—”

“No.”

“And butt-dialed from your phone, because you've done that to me countless of times—”

“That was _once—_ ” 

“And Oikawa then used his _sixth_ sense to find us, because you often forget about his _sixth_ sense—”

“ _What_ , are we fighting about this now?” asks Matsukawa, maybe just the slightest bit peeved (but mostly joking, perhaps). He keeps a smile on, whatever this might be, and stays close while Hanamaki takes out his phone.

“No—” because Hanamaki would be more apt to call it a _minor grievance_. Nothing to fight over. Still, Matsukawa tries grabbing for his phone when he realizes Hanamaki’s aiming for the Twitter app (something he's _never_ on), because Matsukawa’s the one that's _always_ on it, and there’s bound to be something he doesn’t want Hanamaki seeing, so— 

Oh.

Hanamaki feels like hitting him, when it comes on the screen.

“I don't usually _tweet_ , per se,” Matsukawa comes to his own defense. “I mean, you _think_ I do, but I'm just reading most of the time.”

“So you decide to tweet _this_ as your first?” 

“I have no regrets. You're free to kill me, now.” 

“I won't... _kill you_.” Hanamaki looks down at the picture once more, a shot of him caught unaware in an empty classroom with his back mostly turned. It's a little blurred, but that's okay, and Matsukawa’s picked a photo filter only he could really love.

To him, it looks like warmth on a cool night, or simmer in the darkness. He wonders if this is how Matsukawa sees him.

“Listen, I don't really know how to take pictures or anything.”

“It's okay—” 

Above, a caption reads, _going to Sangenjaya_ , small, and well within character limits. 

“—actually, more than okay.”

And Hanamaki feels like kissing him, when he realizes the enormity of the words. He musters up the strength for it, the audacity for it—

“ _Makki_.”

—before a shop clerk chases them out from behind the coat racks. She's got a broom in hand, ready to _wreck_ , and Hanamaki takes that as a signal _to run_. Down the alley they go, past everything they were supposed to see, and Hanamaki just takes it in stride. Let the city rush past him. It's not like he came here for the sights, anyway.

Hanamaki gleams back at him, and watches Matsukawa laugh, too.

 

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

The next day, two boys meander back up the steps, right at dusk and at the bay of a lavender sky. Matsukawa leads this time, because Hanamaki’s not sure how he's even going to make it through another _punishment lap_ at this point, and _someone's_ got to have the energy for the two of them. So he yanks Hanamaki up, step by dreaded step, and has the nerve to mutter, _oh so_ nonchalantly, that _it's not so bad._  

“See,” Matsukawa starts. “This is why you can't beat Iwaizumi ar arm wrestling.” 

“Oh, to hell with you,” Hanamaki finishes listlessly, when he finds the will to make up to the top. Just a little longer until they get there, he surmises, and almost in time to watch the sun set for the evening. Matsukawa stays where he is without moving on, because he must be tired, too, and they are content to linger for as long as summer does not intrude. In the patch of their own shade, it's quiet, just as it should be, and Hanamaki’s still got the lingering urge to kiss him again. He doesn't though, because there's a time and place for such things, and he gets the feeling that Matsukawa’s got something on his mind.

“I never did answer your question,” Matsukawa says, and Hanamaki confirms his suspicions. “From last night.”

Oh. _Right._ He had forgotten about that. When Hanamaki peers up, too dazed to really keep still on the ground, he thinks he might not need an answer, in the first place. He watches how a metropolis blankets the space under them, ever-expanding in their wards and skytowers and artificial islands, those multiplying city lights, those strange little neighborhoods that never know how to fall asleep for the night—and knows instantly. It’s everything—crowded like asteroid belts and strange like ringed planets—and Hanamaki would not be the one to deny Matsukawa _everything_. 

“You don't need to,” Hanamaki decides, and the smile across his face is small, but sincere. Matsukawa follows along, maybe just a little bit surprised, before taking out his phone.

“This is the kind of picture that's _second tweet_ worthy, don't you think?” he asks with lens pointed at him, and the moment is lost. In defiance, Hanamaki just tosses his head up, tongue out in a snippet, and runs up the hill right past him.

“ _Oh_ , won’t you look at that—” Hanamaki calls, eyes not on the road. “I found the energy to run again.” 

Matsukawa is seamless in playing along. “Lucky you. Maybe you’ll be able to beat Iwaizumi, now.” 

“Maybe, _definitely_ , because _—_ ”

“Oh shit, _wait_ —” 

And as smooth as smooth can be, Hanamaki runs right into a low-lying branch and ends up right on the ground. He opens his eyes to Matsukawa hovering over him, horrified like he could’ve actually died _or something,_ and watches the smile erupt across his face in the next instance. With a _tch_ and the click of his tongue, he helps Hanamaki sit up, notices the blood on his white tee, and helps wipe his nose off. 

“What a mess,” comes a whisper, barely there but certainly close enough.

The sun goes like a last drop, but Hanamaki still catches something blinding ahead. Eyes away from Matsukawa, he catches a hitch in his breath instead, realizes his whole body might be betraying him, and wonders if he should pay a visit to the emergency room, after all. Lungs failing. Eyes, blinded. An undeniable tightness in his chest. _Just bury me in the ground, already,_ he thinks, _all dead and good_ when Matsukawa goes to help him up, anyway. There's a certain firmness in his hands. They keep longer together than they should.

“Yeah—a mess,” is what Hanamaki tells him after a little while, when there’s still a bit of blood coming out from his nose and he’s got one of his knees all scraped up; Matsukawa notices, as _beaus_ are bound to do, and even offers to help him all the way back.

  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  


 

 

The rest of the evening is pleasant, spent waiting for death along the hillside with a plate of watermelon and a new playlist playing off a phone speaker. Hanamaki swears he can't feel his calves while Matsukawa lives by the lightness in his head, and it's nothing but intermittent dosing and cricket songs between them. 

“Two hundred and twenty three.” 

Hanamaki turns to face him. “And what are you counting?” he asks. Up at the sky, he sees about a tenth of the stars they usually see in the mountains of Miyagi. _No to that,_ he guesses, and Matsukawa stirs next to him on the grass.

“Nothing,” Matsukawa says. “Just talking to myself, I guess.”

Hanamaki is too tired to press on. He yawns, deep with ache, and lets his muscles tense before settling. He counts on after that, thinking of random numbers. “Well, I can top that,” he says, and Matsukawa’s the last thing he sees before closing his eyes. He's not smiling. “Three hundred and sixty six. Seven thousand and seven. A million. _Infinity_.”

“Infinity, huh?” Matsukawa asks. “I didn't count you for such a romantic, Makki.” 

“Huh? How do numbers make me a romantic? They're the least romantic thing I can think of,” he scoffs, when he remembers the mounds of unfinished homework and blank answer sets waiting back at home. 

“Nothing.” 

“But it's something,” Hanamaki refutes, popping his eyes back open. Matsukawa lets those heavy lids reign, a washed fringe hit that biggish forehead, and Hanamaki feels the oddest urge to relent.

“Just think of it like a riddle,” says Matsukawa, his exhale an endless sigh, and Hanamaki watches the way his lips purse ever so slightly. That pretty nose of his reaches the heavens. He closes his eyes when he sees that paltry Tokyo sky.

Matsukawa glances back over when he knows the stratosphere will not suit him after all. He smiles under the low light, the low gaze, and at once Hanamaki might understand. He gulps down in the face of the countdown, two hundred and twenty three days away, and shuts his eyes blind to it.

  


 

 

* * *

 

  


 

When Oikawa says it, it's about two months later amongst the waning cicadas. 

“You've been in extra sync, lately.”

Hanamaki looks up from his book, Matsukawa’s worn copy of _Kafka on the Shore_ , and shuts it closed. “With you? I thought you said we still had to work on our low tosses.”

“I don't mean us,” says Oikawa. “I meant you and Mattsun. Practice yesterday was a little more seamless than usual.” 

“Maybe that gorilla in Sangenjaya was good luck, after all,” Hanamaki jokes, careful to adjust his steps for the descent downhill. 

Oikawa just shoots him a dirty glance (he still hasn't quite forgiven the two of them for skipping out on movie night), and shrugs with the slightest flick of his shoulders. He walks on ahead. 

“Mattsun’s started studying for exams, too, right?” Oikawa changes the subject. “That sounds like fun.” 

Hanamaki rolls his eyes. _Fun_ maybe to a masochist. “He's been up every night until two.”

“I'm sure it's not so bad if you're the one joining him,” Oikawa breezes out, sharp with a peek over his shoulder. “I remember sleeping over at Iwa-chan’s as a kid, and getting excited when you had to borrow a shirt or something. There's a strange satisfaction in smelling the kind of detergent they use, or knowing how they've stretched out the collar, or—”

“Wait. _What_? How'd you know I was sleeping over?” Hanamaki asks, pulling down on the tee he'd been wearing all day, one familiar and just a bit ugly, but comfy all the same, and— _oh._ He stares down at the strange floral mosaic, so used to sharing clothes with Matsukawa by now he'd hardly noticed, and Oikawa just stops to laugh at his expense. 

“Makki-chan, you and Mattsun are too cute.”

“Gross,” Hanamaki says. Still, he's tempted to ask about all the things Oikawa’s shared with Iwaizumi over the years, everything from mismatched socks to pocket dictionaries, but he'd hate for their stroll to turn into relationship chatter _._ Oikawa's already one step ahead though, because he's _always_ one step ahead, and comes close to Hanamaki; he makes his observations like an explorer on the map of someone else’s _coupledom_ , and Hanamaki just squirms in the face of it.

“So have you put any thought into it?” Oikawa asks, and the sound of it is smaller than usual. “What's going to happen when graduation comes?”

Hanamaki peers over back at his captain, frowns at the question like he doesn't already know the answer, and walks on. Because he _does_ know. He will not let himself forget it.

“It'll be over, by then,” he explains, and he gets the sense that Oikawa might already understand. “There’s no use in clinging onto things, when you know you've both got _new_ things to do.”

“And you won't miss him when that happens?”

Hanamaki shrugs. “No. Well, maybe. _Yes_ , I guess.” He feels his face light up. “And why are you even asking? Afraid Iwaizumi’s gonna leave you for someone in Fukuoka?”

Oikawa unlatches himself from Hanamaki, maybe on the edge of someone horrified. “What?” he asks. 

“Fukuoka. Didn't you know he was going to—” 

“No, no, I knew about _that_ , but—”

“You're turning red, Oikawa—”

“ _Well_ , how am I not supposed to when—”

“Oh, wait—” Hanamaki’s eyes go wide. “You two aren't—” 

“ _No,_ we are _not_ ,” says Oikawa. “What? Does the rest of the team still think that, too?” He shakes his head, a _tch_ to follow with steps quick up the road. “I thought I'd thrown you all off, when I asked Mattsun for kissing lessons that one time…” 

“Hey, now.” Hanamaki catches up. “So that was true.”

“ _What_? Jealous?” Oikawa asks, and Hanamaki feels his face scrunch up in a frown. “Well, _rest assured_ , I don't like Mattsun that way _at all._ I'm not a homewrecker.”

They almost make it to the bottom of the hill, where Matsukawa and Iwaizumi have probably died from boredom by now. “Still,” Hanamaki says, shaking off the strangest bout of _nerves_. “You two are together all the time, you know? It'd be easy to suspect.”

Oikawa stops dead on the path, head down to face the gravel. “Well,” he starts, “there's more than one way to be together, isn't there?”

Hanamaki’s still trying to figure that out. “Sure.”

“You've got your kind of _together_ , with the sneaking around and the _kissing_ and—” Oikawa says without taking a breath. “And I've got my own kind of _together_. Best friends and nothing more.” Hanamaki watches the way Oikawa squeezes his hands shut, tight and bound like he won't allow himself to say anything else.

At this, Hanamaki decides to leave such subjects for the promise of quiet. When they reach the bottom of the hill, Matsukawa waves and Iwaizumi comes charging right back up, more miffed than anything else. Oikawa puts on his best face after that, a smile of the breeziest caliber, and Hanamaki watches how Iwaizumi softens ever so slightly.

“Come on,” Matsukawa says to Hanamaki, right in the ear, and hands come together to link.

Hanamaki thinks about the word again, _together_ , and decides he cannot place it this time, either.

  
  


 

 

 

* * *

 

  
  


 

 

Hanamaki presses his head down on the other side of the kotatsu, hand open with a pencil in his hand. With homework neglected and Matsukawa sleeping on the other side, he writes the word down in all his blank spaces, examines them for an answer, and finds himself swimming in them, instead.

Together: 

 _Together,_ Hanamaki’s been told, meant _really_ just that: like kisses and held hands and weird little pet names, all of which they shared except for the last thing, because _pet names_ were where he drew the line (at least for now—because they still had a tournament to play at that point and they were _seriously_ distracting). 

 _Together_ meant not having to be together at all: there was a comfort in not sharing bus seats, or getting ready on opposite sides of the room—because as much as he liked the closeness, Hanamaki took the utmost pride in those knowing glances, those peeks, _and speaking of peeks_ —

 _Together_ , Hanamaki decides, meant watching Matsukawa change into his jersey without looking away at first glance, because he thinks it’s okay to be curious about the moles on his back and the line of a spine he might want to touch one day (or, _well,_ any day by now, because they both wanted to jump each other at this point).

 _Together_ also meant saving extra band-aids in his pockets, all for when Matsukawa would ( _inevitably_ ) cut himself on a page he's trying to turn, because it's not fun to feel the sting for too long, and it’d be a sin to dog-ear all the corners. 

(But Matsukawa had shut his book closed after that, anyway. _“Ready for our last?”_ he’d asked, and Hanamaki just told him to quit talking like they were about to meet their deaths.)

(But _that’s besides the point_ , and Hanamaki was getting off track, _because_ —)

 _Together_ meant listening to his mix tapes on the bus ride to their _last_ tournament, even if he really thought _lo-fi_ was the sort of genre only reserved for long car rides and quiet days. 

 _Together_ meant stupid little jabs like _“don’t get all nervous on me now,”_ even if the both of them knew there’s no way they’d lose their nerve in the first place.

 _Together_ meant stepping on the court side by side, pushing the same cart with their hands about to touch, like some secret handshake no one else would get to learn.

 _Together_ meant seeing each other play, _synced up_ in a way he’d never thought possible (because _we were really unstoppable that day, no matter what anyone thinks_ —and _damn it,_ _it still stings_ —)

The pencil tip breaks when he thinks of the next part.

(He hates the next part.)

Because _together_ meant seeing Matsukawa cry on the court, openly, but quietly. Hanamaki had been the first one he looked at that time, like he knew just where to find him, and it was enough to get him started too.

_Together._

Hanamaki inhales sharp and deep. That had been a month and a half ago, _so no use in sulking now._ At the constant reminder, he picks up another pencil off the tabletop, realizes he’s run out of blank spaces to fill out the word, and sticks to staring at the margins. Maybe he shouldn’t be thinking of such things so late in the night, he thinks, and wonders if it’s time for bed. He looks over to Matsukawa, who’s still sleeping away on an arm outstretched, and reaches over to wake him up.

But he doesn’t. Hanamaki stops short with the graze of fingers over his head, _that messy head,_ and takes a few locks by a brazen touch. He thinks about how he’ll have to start picking petals again, right on the other side of this winter season, and remembers not to look so far ahead. 

Instead, he sits back down at his side of the table. On a blank space where his name should go at the top of the page, Hanamaki writes the word one more time. He decides that he still doesn’t know what it means, because such things are always forming and shifting and _dying_ just to form again, but that if he could come close enough, he’d be satisfied. 

Because _together,_ Hanamaki concludes, meant being here, just like this.

  
  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


“And this is where I say goodbye to you,” Hanamaki jokes, when they’re still a week away from graduation, clothes off and buried under blankets.

With a smile, Matsukawa picks off a familiar mosaic t-shirt off his chest, a mismatched sock, and glances up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on Hanamaki’s ceiling. “What? Were you using me for my body all this time?” he asks, flopping an arm over Hanamaki, but it’s fine, because it’s still cold as _hell_ and the extra body heat is nice. Hanamaki nods, deadpan in the face, and Matsukawa just shakes his head, all sighs when he proclaims, “ _I knew it. Relationship over._ ” 

What Matsukawa gets next is a pillow to the face. He laughs anyway, careful to keep the noise down from thin walls, and decides to shut his eyes closed. Next to him, Hanamaki takes a look at that face again, that pretty nose and those biggish ears, comfortable in his leans on Matsukawa’s _pressure points_ , and gets close enough to whisper.

“Have you started packing already?” Hanamaki asks, when he thinks of decent test scores and acceptance letters. He ignores the tightness in his chest. “You’re going to have a hard time if you leave it last minute again.” 

Matsukawa scoffs. “What? Are you going to start going over the things I need, like usual?”

“No. Too lazy,” Hanamaki proclaims, maybe just a little too sad.

“Well, last minute it is, then. Don’t blame me when I come calling at six o’clock in the morning.”

“I wouldn’t put it past you.”

Hanamaki yawns and checks the time on his desk clock. 3:17AM. Another late night. He wonders how many of those they’ve had by now, either reading to each other, or sharing snacks, or walking the streets, or spending time _like this._ Days stretch into light years, right past signed apartment leases and Hanamaki’s first foray into _GALAXY SUPERMARKETS,_ and he wonders if Matsukawa can feel it, too.

“Hey, Makki.” 

A smile spreads across Hanamaki’s face. “Yeah?” he answers, gentle and on the verge of sleep. 

“What would you think of it?” Matsukawa asks through the quiet. “The idea of us, staying together?” 

At all their light years and the galaxies to be formed, Hanamaki just presses himself closer against the nape of his favorite person’s neck. He reaches up, blind, and settles his touch against his favorite mess.

  


 

 

* * *

 

  
  
  


 

“You’ll have to let me think about it,” Hanamaki tells him a week later, when they’ve got graduation bouquets on the curb and a single canned coffee to share. He picks a cherry blossom petal out of Matsukawa’s hair, feeling cheekier than usual, and gulps down the pathetic urge to cry.

Matsukawa doesn’t start, either. He does not fret. They stay at their favorite convenience store, right on the _last proposed day,_ and remain past nagging shop clerks and suns that set too soon. Lo-fi spews out of unworn headphones. A neon sign blinks on. Midnight comes and midnight will go, but Hanamaki knows the feeling won’t fade right at the end of those sixty seconds. 

It’s 12:01 and a new frontier, when Hanamaki leans over the sidewalk to kiss him.

 _“Issei,”_ he calls for the first time, maybe not the last, Matsukawa smiles with the night on his face.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
***  
  
  


 

 

 

 

 

 

Another spring arrives, a kind sort for the streets of Sangenjaya, and the two of them walk on. 

“So, how long have you two been together now?”

With a scowl, Oikawa actually shakes like he’s got the shivers up his spine, kicks up his heels, and continues up the way. 

“It’s! Not! _No_!”

“What? So what Iwaizumi told me the phone the other day isn’t true?”

“I mean, _it is,_ but— _you know._ It’s not like how it was when we were in high school. It’s just. It’s different! And something I don’t want to get into _with you._ ”

“Fair enough.” 

Hanamaki wouldn’t beg to differ. In the three years since graduation, some things have changed—the addition of a few more couplings, some moved apartments, and money in the bank; in celebration, Hanamaki holds up a filled cellophane bag, insists his chips actually taste like _yakiniku_ , and tells Oikawa they’re going to start selling them across the prefecture soon. In turn, it’s amazing how fast Oikawa insists he could sell them _as their mascot,_ but Hanamaki says he’s got another sort of advertising in mind.

“I’m commissioning someone for a jingle,” he says, because he knows just the person for the job, and Oikawa instantly rolls his eyes, unsurprised.

“And so you just _happen_ to know a music producer who can do that sort of thing on the fly for you?”

Hanamaki shrugs. “ _Maybe_.”

“And he just so _happens_ to live here, right in Sangenjaya?”

“ _Who knows_?” he answers, with a smile too smug to ignore.

“And does his name just _happen_ to be Matsukawa Issei?”

Hanamaki stops short. They’ve come to the house anyway, and he figures Oikawa already knows what he needs to know. 

“So, how long have _you_ two been together now?” Oikawa asks in turn, his turn to be clever, and Hanamaki just shrugs. He never really knows the answer, and he prefers to keep it as such, because it’s not like they were ever really built on history, anyway. _To the stars,_ he thinks, before realizing how grand that sounds, and decides that they were never built for such enormity. 

“Hey, Makki.” 

Instead, he just waves when Matsukawa comes to meet them, head tilted in that usual mess, hair a little too long this time, and smiles down when Hanamaki drops the first set of moving boxes on the floor.

“Welcome home," he continues on, right where they left off, and Hanamaki takes the first step towards it.  


 

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all! Hope you enjoyed reading this. This was my first attempt at matsuhana and it was certainly a fun (and very lowkey) time. Come find me at companions.tumblr.com or @iwakages on twitter (whenever i come around to reactivating again haha) if you wanna chat~


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